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SEAPA report: "Burma in mid-2011: a contradictory landscape"

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(SEAPA/IFEX) - 3 October 2011 - In March 2011, Burma installed a nominally civilian government following last year's internationally criticised elections. Led by the former prime minister and now President Thein Sein, it marked the end of the military regime which had ruled Southeast Asia's most insular and regulated nation since 1962.

Media observers, noting that the same generals still occupy positions of power, questioned whether the change from military uniform to civilian suit represents a paradigm shift or merely a public relations exercise. The promises of reform by the government and the changes that have taken place in the past few months have been welcomed, but warily, since this pattern of promises without reform has occurred before in Burma's long history of authoritarian rule.

As Mizzima News editor Sein Win, stated: "The role of independent media is more important than ever in the fight against the polished propaganda machine of the government."

What can we expect from the new government, and what are their reasons for these gestures toward liberalisation?

Dr. Nicholas Farrelly, of Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific, comments:

"Based on all of the recent moves and public statements the long-term prospects for press freedom, and the like, appear more favourable than we have seen since the 1950s. But, as ever, the potential for immediate and unpredicted roll-back of any progress remains. It is an increasingly contradictory landscape".

Online access: one step forward, two steps back

Earlier this month, the government unblocked several foreign news websites, including Reuters, the Guardian, CNN, and the Bangkok Post. Some of the newly accessible sites - Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and the BBC - have Burmese language sections. The websites of exiled Burmese news organisations such as the Democratic Voice of Burma and Irrawaddy can now be accessed, as well as social networking and streaming sites Hotmail, Blogger, and Youtube.

This step toward liberalisation, however welcome, is inconsistent with the government's overall monitoring policy. Not only do a large number of websites remain off-limits, but internet usage is still restricted to the country's public internet cafés. Since November 2010, internet cafes in Rangoon were required by the government to install closed-circuit cameras, screen-capture and keystroke-logging software so that online activities could be recorded and traced back to individuals. Flash drives have also been banned since May of this year.

Mizzima, whose website is only available through non-state-run Internet Service Provider (ISP) Yadanabon, quoted a Rangoon editor as speculating that the state "may want to know how many people access these websites when they are accessible".

Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly persist, amid the government's failure to contend with the range of rights-abusing laws that have been long used to criminalize free speech and prosecute dissidents.As part of the military's "clearance operations" in northern Rakhine State, where thousands of Rohingya Muslims face rampant and systemic human rights violations, the authorities denied independent journalists access to the region since early October.

An officer of the Myanmar army recently filed a criminal complaint against two journalists for allegedly sowing disunity among the military. Even though mediation by the Press Council caused the military to withdraw the case, this incident demonstrates how the military continues to throw its weight to get back at what it perceives as negative publicity.

The Broadcasting Law, approved in August, enabled private companies to enter the broadcast market for the first time. However, it maintains presidential control over the broadcasting sector, and the Broadcasting Council it established is susceptible to political interference.

The report surveys the rocky landscape for media and public discourse since the ruling military junta lifted the curtain on the southeast Asian nation in 2012 after five decades of isolation from the modern world.

As the election looms for later this year, incidents in 2014 and in early 2015 involving the press raises serious questions on the genuineness of media freedom in Burma. The situation is alarming as the state seems to have heaped all the faults and fines on the media in the past year, which has seen a media worker being killed in October on the pretext of national security. International assistance has poured into the country to develop the media aimed at lifting and sustaining the state of media freedom. However, a viable press freedom environment seems unlikely to materialise in Burma before the end of this administration.

There is some skepticism about how much influence Burma's youth movement can assert in terms of political change. Still, activists have benefited from greater access to the Internet, which has brought a new side to the online community after decades of heavy censorship

Burma is at a crossroads. The period of transition since 2010 has opened up the space for freedom of expression to an extent unpredicted by even the most optimistic in the country. Yet this space is highly contingent on a number of volatile factors.

The media landscape in Burma is more open than ever, as President Thein Sein releases imprisoned journalists and abolishes the former censorship regime. But many threats and obstacles to truly unfettered reporting remain, including restrictive laws held over from the previous military regime. The wider government’s commitment to a more open reporting environment is in doubt.

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